Friday, May 2, 2008

Microsoft launches Messenger for Mac 7 and it delivers audio and video for the first time in the corporate service.. The following excerpt is taken from the Mac Mojo Blog!

-----Messenger for Mac 7 includes cool new features for both the corporate service (works with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007) and personal service (works with the Windows Live service). But the biggest milestone here is that Messenger for Mac 7 delivers audio and video for the first time in the corporate service.

One of the exciting features in this release is Bonjour support in Messenger for Mac, available in both personal and corporate services. Using the Mac OS X Bonjour technology, Messenger for Mac 7.0 includes the ability to detect other Messenger for Mac users that are near by on the same local network. Are you at work on the weekend and want to check if anyone else is around? Turn on Bonjour to see who is there…

If you work in an organization deploying Office Communications Server 2007, I think you will enjoy the new features in the corporate service. Messenger for Mac 7 makes it a whole lot easier to track down co-workers you need to contact. Using the new search feature, you can easily search for people in your organization and start communicating with them.

You will also notice more detailed presence information that is compatible with the presence model of Office Communications Server 2007. Messenger for Mac 7 displays additional presence states to better reflect your contacts (or your own) availability. For example, Messenger for Mac will automatically set your status to ‘In a call’ when you are in an Audio or Video call. Messenger for Mac 7.0 also allows you to add a personal note in case you want to provide a little more information about your status (for example: “I’m available through Messenger only!”).

Through the corporate service in Messenger for Mac, you can now conduct virtual meetings with your co-workers using audio and video calls. You can communicate inside or outside your corporate network, you can communicate with co-workers running Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 on Windows, you can even participate in a multi-party Audio or Video conference.

Speaking of Audio and Video support, in the blog post "A Chat about Messenger", posted back in November, I shared with you background information on why AV is not available yet in the Personal service. We are on track with the plan mentioned in the last post, as we are delivering Audio and Video on Corporate service first. We are making progress and working on the delivery of Audio and Video for the personal service and are looking forward to getting the feature out there and in your hands as soon as we can!

There are a few other new features we included in the Personal service…

You can now assign nicknames to your contacts. Do you know two people named Jack and can never tell them apart in your contact list, since they both have their display name set to Jack? Put an end to the confusion and assign them some identifiable nicknames! Do you have a friend that insists on changing his\her display name to a different expression everyday? Use a nickname to reduce the amount of time you spend trying to identify your contact in the contact list.

Has anyone out there finally reached the point of having too many contacts for their own good and now can’t find anyone on that long list of contacts? Just use the new contact search field to look them up.

Better experience it all yourself… go check out Messenger for Mac 7 at the Mactopia site.

And on that note, I’m going back to work now on the next version of Messenger for Mac!-----